Ten years after the ETS - the story and a question

Introduce yourself and share your personal hyperhidrosis related experiences.
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Sympatex
Posts: 2
Joined: Mon Mar 25, 2013 6:41 am

Ten years after the ETS - the story and a question

Post by Sympatex »

Hello everybody,
i'm italian, be patient, sorry for my basic english level :D

My story, briefly; i've been suffering of hyperhidrosis (great palmar, plantar sweating) more or less since i was 11/12, now i'm 48.
No mention about trying to solve the problem going to a 'skin specialist', no result, obviously. I used to think to have a very 'rare' disturb, to be almost alone.
I think it's useless to tell in this forum how distress was the enormous sweating to me, mainly the palmar one. You know.

Only in 1992 i discovered iontophoresis, i bought one, and i used it for quite a decade; my life changed, i experienced for the very first time what 'dry hands' meant. Those who know this kind of electric equipments know the experience, it makes you 'free and slave' at the same time. At various degrees free from sweating, but you become slave of the machine: i don't know if and how much they've been emproved nowadays, but in ten years i remember the times i've forgotten to do my session (..and let's start from the beginning! three times a week, then slowly later twice, then one...), the unbearable and discomfort sensations while you do it, to hide this practice to the 'main public' (only some close friends knew it), when you travel it's a big big problem, i like to, so i did it in such *** situations.. and more.

Only in 2003 i discovered Ets (i know, i'm a little bit retard). A thunderbolt! After one month maybe, i was under the surgeon's knife of a good doctor, the side effects seamed to be a more than acceptable risk. They were, as far as I knew, Compensatory Hyperhidrosis, Horner's Syndrome, little more. Well, i took the risk, and i did it.
I remember to be really excited after this light kind of surgery, i was out of the hospital after one night, with my dry hands, maybe the feets too, but a minor problem. Now i'm free to shake hands, i thought, free to caress, to play an instrument, to draw (even if i didn't play and draw ;) ,
I was happy after a life of pain; either the strong compensatory i lived later forced me to change idea, i kept writing on an italian forum that it was The Solution, to me. I lived, and i live half year as a normal men, in winter and part of autumn and spring (do these exist anymore??).

But in rome the humidity is merciless, and when the temperature starts to raise, i'm aka undershirt-man, socks-man and shower-man. It's hard, really hard under several aspects: once again i won't mention everything among making love and have a wet chest on a crowded place, and your shirt begin to color; neverthless after 10 years i would say it's better than before, even if i would tell it in a lower voice.
Thank you for following me till now, I see I wrote a lot, and a lot to write. But the point is yet to come, because I realized Ets may be really more dangerous than it seems; and it is it for me, I’m discovering it now.

Reading about the Ets ‘side effects’ (can we really name it this way?) on this website (http://truthaboutets.com/Pages/FXBottom.html), this is a list of only the ones I believe happened to me:
- Compensatory Hyperhidrosis: just told about it, I knew it

- Anhidrosis, inability to sweat from the nipple line up: if it is only this, the less important one

- Dysfunctional Thermoregulation, cannot tolerate hot temperatures: it was already so for the cold ones before: now I added the hot, but I want to tell myself it’s still quite ‘normal’

- Bradycardia, Reduced Capacity for Exercise, Chronic Fatigue: I could not tell I’m bradycardic, and I’m getting older, so it could be the normal flow of the age. But, I feel easily tired, more than it should be

- Greatly Reduced Tolerance of Stress: it makes the pair with the one before, but I read something that is belonging to me only these years after the surgery: ‘chronic fatigue, oversensitivity to sound and light, or just the general feeling that they can’t handle nervousness as well as they used to’. It’s me now, non before.

- Feeling Weird: ‘ETS victims report feeling "strange" or "altered" or "not right" in ways that are very hard to put into words’. Well, it’s the ‘new me’ again.

- Loss of Goose Bumps and Physical Pleasure: here we are, the main sensation. ‘Physically unable to experience a rush of emotion. You know that wonderful feeling of chills that go up and down your spine when your hear a beautiful song, see a great movie, or fall in love? Gone. Pleasure from a good neck or scalp massage? Gone.’.

- Mental and Emotional Changes: ‘patients without mental disorders to begin with may feel it has left them "less than human" or "like an android" or "disconnected" or "spacey".’
We’re entering the heart of the problem. I became to feel ‘colder’, indifferent, detached. I can’t feel really excited, happy. My emotions seemed to have gone. Is it the same for you?? I asked myself for years what was happening to me, and I didn’t know anything about Ets post-sensations, really.
I fought against it, and I’m right now. For sure many other things have happened to my life to make me worst, and I’ll tell about it later. But, I can talk since a certain moment, and it is for sure after the Ets (and more the others, my friends, family, told it to me), I felt changed, too much, too distant from the myself I knew. Rage begun to take the place of many other emotions and sentiments, because I didn’t feel life the way I was used to.

- Anger and Depression: ‘Once the reality and permanence of ETS disability sink in, many victims understandably become angry… support groups are full of very depressed people who feel that this surgery simply ruined their lives. ’
I’m divorced now (and I have a child), this is one of the aspects I could tell have had their importance in my current semi-depressive state, but I’m not sure, emotional sides came before. Before divorcing, I felt the more and more angry, and depressed.
The thing I can say, I’ve always been very reactive about life’s problems and facts through all my life; this is not true anymore. Ets?? I don’t know..

- *** Dysfunction: I would like to tell you more about this, but I’m not able at the moment ;) I’m alone now, once I’ll have new experiences in this field, I could tell. It wasn’t a problem, let’s assume it’s not now too. What I can surely tell about is a loss of libido: once again greater than my age would get, and even considering my stress post-divorce: "...the figures don't add up".

Having said all above, I want to point this: I carefully tried to sell all of this I wrote above ‘net of tare’, paying attention not to mix Ets effects with my personal life, dramas, disappointment, disillusions, let’s say each fact of my life that could have (and of course they have it) worsened myself and lead to my current mental and physical state of play. And i weighted my age too, of course. Everything has been balanced, but I’m sincerely confident to tell that Ets have been heavily involved.
I feel it as a clear intuition now, and it has to be considered as a personal experience, not to be taken as the truth, or something that can be proved. It’s true for me, that’s it.

And now the last, but not least.
- Heart deseases: touching (cutting, clipping) T1, T2, T3 interrupt the nerve tracks and nodes (ganglia) which transmit the signals not to the sweat glands only. The Ets literature leads you to the importance of these ganglia on many other functions, mainly their role in heart functionality. We’re perfect as we are and not made ‘random’, I believe, then I would recommend to consider all the other solutions, before proceeding with Ets solution. The desired ‘dry effect’ could be not the only ones if you cut a nerve node, cause it’s a node, then it is done for many purposes.

Now, my heart disease is called "right bundle branch block, or RBBB’. ‘.. is a pattern seen on the electrocardiogram (ECG) that occurs when the cardiac electrical impulse is interrupted as it spreads across the heart’.
And now what’s this? I asked myself when the doctor said it to me, appeared since 2008, during a normal ECG for sport. I can’t say if it was there before the Ets, because my previous ECG is maybe of 2000, I still have to check.
But that’s the brand new, I have it. The strange thing is this: I have no family history in heart deseases: many others, of course, like everyone of us. But not this, nothing to do with heart. Welcome, I’m the first, and this could be absolutely ‘normal’, of course. But, but, I would like to discover with you if in the post-Ets literature there is something similar, if it could deal with the clipping of a ganglia.
Please if you know something about it, let me know (let us know!).

More: T1 to T3 ganglia plays a role about the caption and release of dopamine and serotonin, wich together with endorphins and oxytocin are called ‘Happyness neurochemicals’.
I think that if you decrease the ability of the above nerves to do their work, it could be i.e. named ‘depression’. Am I wrong? Has someone investigated upon it? Please let me know it too..

Thank you all, you’ve been very nice to read everything.
Bye, Roberto

slovenec
Posts: 54
Joined: Sun Jan 27, 2013 2:19 am

Re: Ten years after the ETS - the story and a question

Post by slovenec »

You shouldn't give up. Our body has a limited ability to regenerate itself. I had ETS (T2) in 1997 for horrible palmo-plantar hyperhidrosis. I was lucky and my only serious side effect was CS which developed more than a year after the surgery. The CS started improving about 10 years after ETS and it is almost gone now. My hands, arms and head sweat during heavy exercise, in a sauna or in a very hot and humid weather. I also experience goose bumps. I never had problems with emotions or anger. It is interesting that I also have a rather strange ECG. I run 15 km almost every day and at least three times a week I play squash and badminton. My pulse is about 55 resting and I experienced no decrease while I exercise (last week I ran for 90 minutes and my average pulse was 178.) My doctor told me that the strange results of an ECG are not problematic as long as I am able to exercise the way I do now - he told me that many strange results of ECG test are not pathological, some people are just "made" that way. I am not sure about other side effects. I must say that I am a bit more lazy and that I can gain weight easier after the surgery - but, this can be a result of aging.

Sympatex
Posts: 2
Joined: Mon Mar 25, 2013 6:41 am

Re: Ten years after the ETS - the story and a question

Post by Sympatex »

Thank you Slovenec for your reply, it really helps.
Looking for heart deseases after ETS, going from reduction of heart rate to pacemaker, i 'm trying to figure out if my RBBB (right bundle branch block) could have been engended by this surgery. This would help me and the others to better undesrstand the post-Ets phenomena, always keeping in mind that we all have different bodies, altough we all are human, and everyone of us replies in a different manner.
Nonetheless this kind of problem could be inserted among the already known, or remain an isolated problem, only mine: this is the option i hope. ;)
Have a good day

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